Sunset, Wednesday, 25 November 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

This view is turned a little bit south from the usual perspective ... for those who know the area, looking more or less toward Charlottesville Airport from a mile east of 29.

Now ... in my sincerely misguided effort to be all things to all people, and in the belief that almost everyone who’s on the web at this moment is desperately seeking Thanksgiving dinner advice, I offer a little something culinary to go with the sunset.

After years, many years, of following the family habit of simply serving whole roasted yams, I switched last year to Roasted Yam Puree With Brown Butter, a recipe from the November 2004 issue of Bon Appétit. It was a hit, but probably only because I remembered that Patrick O’Connell, of The Inn at Little Washington (Washington, Virginia), had a Brown Butter recipe (the brown butter directions for the Bon Appétit yams seemed dangerously general and vague). I got O’Connell’s brown butter from The Inn at Little Washington Cookbook, but you can find it here. I think it’s critical to the success of the yams.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been roasting something like 7 or 8 pounds of yams and using more than a cup of butter. This year (I finished them just now, before sunset) I roasted garnet yams a good 90 minutes instead of an hour – a long, emphatic roasting for a sweeter, almost caramelized flavor, which then makes the puree more complex when combined with brown butter.

Happy Thanksgiving and good night!